A baggy green once worn by Sir Donald Bradman has joined the National Historical Collection at the National Museum of Australia, giving visitors a rare chance to see up close a piece of cricket history linked to the nation’s most famous batsman.
The cap, worn during the 1946–47 Ashes series against England, was acquired for $438,550. Half of that cost was covered by the Australian Government through the National Cultural Heritage Account, a grant program designed to preserve objects of national cultural value.
Sir Donald Bradman led Australia in the first Ashes Test series after the Second World War, a moment that marked more than just a return to cricket. It signalled, for many, the beginning of a new chapter in post-war life. Bradman, who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, remains a figure deeply tied to Australian identity, his reputation extending well beyond the sporting world.
Minister for the Arts Tony Burke said the purchase ensures the cap will be available for future generations to connect with. “You’d be hard-pressed to meet an Australian that hasn’t heard of the great Donald Bradman, arguably the greatest cricketer of all time,” Mr Burke said.
“Now to have one of his iconic baggy greens in the National Museum of Australia means visitors will have the opportunity to get up close and connect with our sporting and cultural history.”
The National Museum’s director Katherine McMahon said the acquisition came at an important time for the institution and the country. “Sir Donald’s baggy green marks the life of Australia’s most celebrated batsman and reflects a time when sporting heroes gave Australians hope, following the heartbreak and hardship of the Second World War,” she said.
“We are delighted this national treasure has found a home here at the National Museum of Australia for all Australians to enjoy.”
The cap is one of just 11 known Bradman baggy greens still in existence and will be displayed in the Museum’s recently reopened Landmarks gallery, which explores defining stories and symbols in Australian life from 1770 to the present.
The gallery already holds other Bradman memorabilia, including a bat he signed during the 1934 Ashes series in Nottingham and the ball bowled by Eddie Gilbert, a First Nations cricketer, who dismissed Bradman for a duck in 1931. Gilbert’s delivery remains one of the more storied moments in Australian domestic cricket.
The National Cultural Heritage Account has previously helped the Museum acquire a range of rare items. These include a thylacine skin from 1923, considered among the best preserved of the extinct animal; a 1912 McDonald ‘Imperial’ tractor, one of the earliest oil-powered machines made in Australia; and an Australian Colonial Billiard Table, a standout of 19th-century local craftsmanship.
Each acquisition under the program is intended to strengthen the public record and make Australian stories accessible to a broader audience. This latest addition is likely to resonate across generations, cricket fan or not. Few sporting figures in any country carry the symbolic weight that Bradman does in Australia.
The cap itself is more than a museum piece. For many Australians, it speaks to the endurance of shared memory, stitched into the fabric of a game that once helped a country find comfort and pride in uncertain times. The Museum’s latest purchase quietly restores that connection.
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